


trying not to tell you always

by Maria_Antonina



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gift Fic, Kinda, M/M, everyone is ooc, no beta we die like Glenn, quarantine fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:59:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23750443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maria_Antonina/pseuds/Maria_Antonina
Summary: Lorenz is in something of a predicament. That it is of his own making only makes him feel worse about it.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 72





	trying not to tell you always

**Author's Note:**

> Gift fic, gift fic, gift fic! Written for [princessazuraofnohr](https://princessazuraofnohr.tumblr.com/), for [patricia-von-arundel's](https://patricia-von-arundel.tumblr.com/) gift exchange. 
> 
> It's not exactly the way I wanted it to go, alas, time is out! Please enjoy some fairly OOC claurenz as Lorenz deals with Emotions.

Lorenz is in something of a predicament. That it is of his own making only makes him feel worse about it.

“Look, not to rain on your mortification parade,” Dorothea sighs, the quality of the whatsapp call shifting as she moves through her flat, “but what you did was a _nice thing_.”

“I didn’t want to be nice, I wanted him to get on with his work!,” Dorothea looks directly into the camera, a perfectly manicured eyebrow raised all the way to her hairline. Lorenz immediately feels like he’d failed some sort of a test. “What?”

“Lorenz. Lorrie. Honey,” she groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You did _not_ invite a friend to live with you because you appreciate his community input. That’s your daddy issues talking.”

“My-- what are you on about?”

...But then he hears the knock on the balcony door, and drops the call in panic. Dorothea will never let him live this down, but that’s a problem for Future Lorenz. Current Lorenz whips around to see Claude show him two sauce packets through the glass. He’s talking, either unaware or uncaring that Lorenz can’t really make out the words.

“The teriyaki one,” he says, feels like an idiot, and slides the door open. “Teriyaki. If that’s alright.”

“I told you it’s your choice, didn’t I?”

Claude returns to the kitchen, and he’s humming some sort of tune that Lorenz already knows will be stuck in his head for the rest of eternity. He’s so, so screwed.

*****

“I don’t have understanding,” Petra says over Dorothea’s shoulder. They’re both in bed, wearing pajamas, and clearly making the most out of a bad situation. Lorenz has a feeling he’s interrupting something. “Before, you said you want to consume more time together.”

“I know what I said,” Lorenz groans. “But I was drunk, and I didn’t think it would actually happen.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Dorothea chortles. Of course, she finds his suffering endlessly amusing, because Lorenz doesn’t have friends so much as a bunch of cruel harpies out for his neck. “Isn’t he wondering why you’re out on the balcony the whole day?”

Lorenz hides his face in his hands. His entire set up -- plastic table, laptop and a tea mug -- rattle ominously at the movement. “He thinks I smoke.”

And by now, Claude also likely thinks Lorenz hates him and wants the whole lockdown done with, so that they can never see each other again. Which is. Not. The case. But Lorenz had never shared his living space with anyone before, and didn’t anticipate just how much of a disruption Claude’s presence will be.

For one, he hums. All the time. Sometimes Lorenz recognises the songs, mostly he doesn’t, but they just… stay on repeat in his head until he wants to bang in against the wall. He cooks, too, and has a grandmother-like need to feed Lorenz until he passes out in a spectacular food coma. Lorenz, who’d been eating most of his meals alone since he was old enough not to spatter the porridge on the surrounding area, finds Claude’s dinnertime rituals strange and enticing at once. He’s just very awkward about it. He’s also very awkward about Claude leaving the bathroom in just a towel, but has been a bit better at hiding it, mostly by retreating into his bedroom.

They’re both working from home, but only Claude has been forced to by the pandemic. Lorenz, with his admittedly cushy admin job in his family’s property agency, had relatively few reasons to go into the office, save for the monthly all-hands meetings, and has an entire remote set-up in what used to be his office-slash-spare-bedroom. Which, in an effort to do his part for the good of humanity, he’d vacated so that Claude could continue to see his counselling clients in a private and professional setting. Claude’s work was important, even if the man himself could be flippant about it sometimes, and Lorenz could write emails from his laptop. On the balcony. 

Dorothea takes pity on his anguished silence. “Look, hon,” she sighs. She’s been doing it a lot at him lately. “You don’t have to hide the fact that you enjoy his company. If he found you as heinous as you think he does, he wouldn’t have moved in.”

Lorenz thinks of Claude's previous roommates. Hilda, Lysithea and Marianne are all brilliant, of course, in their own ways, and also entirely incapable of maintaining the kind of quiet, personal space Claude requires to do his job. Even with two out of three working all of the hours at the hospital, Lorenz had never seen their shared house in anything other than a state of a delightful, and _loud_ , chaos. Still, he knows better than to argue with Dorothea, and keeps it all to himself.

Petra looks even more puzzled at her words, anyway. “But--,” she pauses to collect her words, “Claude will think you regret it, if you don’t speak.”

“Or that you’re set on developing lung cancer.”

“Fine!,” Lorenz throws his hands in the air. The mug nearly topples off the crappy folding table. He needs better balcony furniture. “I’ll-- I don’t know. Work inside?”

“That’s the spirit, Lorrie, baby steps,” Dorothea smiles, and it’s so condescending Lorenz mentally retreats from the entire conversation. It’s the end of his break anyway, so they end the call and he returns to writing the most polite ‘sod off’ email he can muster to the local director of lettings.

After staring at the blinking cursor on the screen for perhaps a beat too long, he risks a glance into the living room. It’s empty; Claude is apparently busy with a client. It takes him an embarrassing amount of time to move to the sofa inside anyway.

*

It’s been over a week, and the new, socially-distanced, mask-wearing reality is giving Lorenz a bit of a headache.

He’s always had some anxiety issues --not that his father ever allowed him to go back to a therapist, no sir-- and the entire world imploding is making it somewhat more difficult to manage. He’s been doing just fine to start with, but the longer the lockdown order continues, the harder it is to keep a lid on his worries. He’s limiting himself to one news update a day, with breakfast, and religiously uses his once-a-day outside allowance to jog in the park, even though he’d never even considered running outside before. Alas, his gym is shut, his energy levels are all over the place, and he needs a way to make himself sleep at night. Park runs it is.

The first night he wakes up with a start, he forces himself to lie in the dark for an hour until he falls back asleep. After a couple nights like that, though, he gives up the pretense and gets up to make himself some herbal tea and ponder the life’s unfairness in the dark living room. 

One night, he finds Claude asleep on the sofa, the TV quietly running a late-night rerun or some show or other. He’s wearing pajamas --or tracksuit bottoms and a worn T-shirt, which apparently is the same thing for some-- and Lorenz wonders if he’d also had trouble sleeping. 

It bothers him. Not the sofa-excursion, but the idea that Claude might have trouble sleeping. He’s been relatively cheerful thorough the entire endeavour, making dinner each evening and polite chit-chat thorough the day. It’s his job to take one look at people like Lorenz and know they’re a mess, so Lorenz doesn’t doubt he’s been trying to make it easier on his impromptu-roommate. The concept that he might be struggling himself is as novel as it is unacceptable.

Lorenz drapes a blanket over Claude’s sleeping form, turns the TV off and goes back to bed. 

*

In an effort to make good on his promise to Dorothea, Lorenz stops escaping to the balcony whenever Claude emerges from his first client call of the day. Instead, he makes two mugs of tea and hopes it’s not weird. Claude seems to appreciate it, though, so he continues, and just like that, a new daily ritual is born. 

At the beginning of week two, Claude comes out of his bedroom-slash-office still on a video call. As he doesn’t do client calls on his phone, and the conversation seems rather animated --it’s impossible to figure out its contents, when Claude speaks Farsi-- Lorenz figures it’s personal and busies himself with the kettle. Right until a screen is shoved in front of his face, featuring a somewhat gruff-looking, bearded man and a smirking, middle-aged woman. With a dawning horror, Lorenz realises that those must be Claude’s parents.

“My folks want to meet you,” Claude says, rolling his eyes, but it’s fond rather than irritated. 

“Hello!,” the woman says. “You must be Lorenz!”

“Um,” Lorenz remembers to close his mouth, and is suddenly very aware that he's still wearing his jogging gear. “Yes. Hello.”

“I hope Khalid isn’t giving you too much trouble,” she chirps, and the man at her side rolls his eyes in a familiar manner. “Feel free to kick him out anytime, we could use him out here, for the shopping.”

Lorenz glances at Claude, whose eyes are full of laughter and therefore no help at all. “I’m-- I have no plans to kick him out, Mrs Riegan. Besides, I don’t think there are any international flights available.”

“Details, details,” she waves her hand. “Put him back on, I have _questions_.”

Lorenz returns the phone to his owner, and the conversation immediately switches back to Farsi. It doesn’t take long; Claude makes him wave goodbye just as the tea is finished brewing. 

“Sorry about that,” he says. “They like to think I’ll be returning to the motherland any day now.”

Lorenz’s stomach is in knots as he hands over the mug. He has a full set of very tasteful, black kitchenware with delicate rose patterns, but Claude brought his own mug. The gigantic thing is adorned with a cartoon deer making a bad pun, and was apparently a gift from his previous household. 

“Well,” he mutters into his own tea. “There’s no rush on that.”

Claude smiles. Lorenz can instantly feel his ears heat up. “No, I guess not.”

*

After the parental phone call, Lorenz feels even more like a self-centered ass. Most of Claude’s family, save for a rather crotchety maternal grandfather, lives in Iran, where the situation is… even less great. Claude doesn’t often speak of them, what with hitting puberty around 9/11 and being even vaguely Arabic not the most popular thing to be, so what Lorenz knows is mostly thanks to off-hand comments and some drunken anecdotes from when the pubs were open. 

He’s fairly certain Claude’s relationship with his parents is better than Lorenz’s with his own, though, and so he must be worried sick. And yet, he’s listened to Lorenz vent about his father’s questionable business choices thorough the entire dinner the previous night, without so much as a raised eyebrow. Which, on the spectrum of egotistical faux-passes Lorenz has commited in his life, doesn’t actually scale very high, but still. He’s been working on keeping his privilege in check, and this is not the way to go.

“Do you want to watch something tonight?,” he asks, before he can talk himself out of it. 

Claude looks up from his phone, clearly surprised. “Sure. Anything specific in mind?”

Lorenz hadn’t thought that far ahead. He figured he could provide Claude with some distraction, and that a movie was the least likely to offend. 

“Not really,” he shrugs, trying to keep it cool. “Something light, I guess.”

And that’s how they end up splitting a bottle of red and suffering through the Hobbit film. Lorenz, who has in the past been subjected to the Lord of the Rings franchise against his wishes, doesn’t quite manage to keep his opinions in, and somehow, he and Claude end up arguing about the New Zealand film industry for the better part of an hour as the credits roll by.

“All I’m saying,” he repeats, nearly sloshing his wine out of the glass, “those people need to sue their agents, not the company. Such lack of foresight is criminal.”

“One day, I’ll make you see the light,” Claude promises, before flopping onto his back on the sofa and rubbing his eyes. Lorenz notices it’s nearly one in the morning, but just as he’s about to apologise for keeping them up so late on a school night, Claude says: “I missed this, you know.”

“Missed… what? Bad films?”

“No. Arguing with you,” Claude props himself up on his elbows. He’s clearly half-asleep, on top of half-drunk, and his smile is slightly blurry around the edges. Lorenz can’t look away. “You’ve been weirdly agreeable lately, I was worried this whole moving in thing was too much.”

“It’s not--,” Lorenz begins, because true to form, he’s still in the bickering mode. “I’m getting used to it.”

“Good,” Claude laughs, sagging back down. “Cause the way it’s going, we’re in it for a while.”

He’s asleep before Lorenz can ask if he means the pandemic, or in general. 

*

After-dinner movies become part of the routine, although they decide to leave the alcohol for the weekends, if only because Lorenz doesn’t fancy doing any extra shopping and the delivery companies are slammed.

“So… are you done freaking out, then?,” Dorothea asks. She’s braiding Petra’s hair, but manages to give him a meaningful glance. “Because I can’t help but notice, you’re on the balcony.”

“I’m allowed to--,” Lorenz gives up on the excuse before Dorothea can tell him to quit it. “Claude’s fallen asleep on the sofa. I didn’t want to disturb him.”

“Oh, was it a late night then?”

He doesn’t like Dorothea’s smirk one bit. It doesn’t help that Petra giggles, as if she’s in on some sort of a joke. 

“He just fell asleep,” he says irritably. “I didn’t ask why.”

“Did you put a blanket over him?”

Lorenz _knows_ his face is red, but he’ll be damned if he plays along. “Do you have a point?”

“You totally put a blanket over him.”

“So what?!”

Dorothea apologises to Petra, grabs her phone and looks directly into the camera. Lorenz immediately regrets taking a tone with her, and considers hanging up.

“Lorrie, my dear. Remember how we talked about your identity, and how it’s not about labels, but about finding the right person?”

He doesn’t like where this is going. Why does he keep calling her? He has other friends. Ferdinand never puts him through a wringer like this. When he doesn’t answer for too long, Dorothea continues:

“Are you ready to admit you’ve had a crush on Claude for _ages_ , or should we revisit this next week?”

“I don’t--!”

“Next week, then. Look, I have a braid to finish. In the meantime, why won’t you think on what I said?”

*

Lorenz is being punished by the fates for all of the indelicacies he’d committed at university, he’s sure of that. There’s no other explanation.

He’s trying to work. His father, unable to operate a teleconference and unlikely to actually ask for help, publicly complained about their London office social distancing rules, and Lorenz has to field the fallout as their PR director decided to self-isolate this morning, for very mysterious reasons. Lorenz, for all of his awkwardness around normal people, can speak business journalism --the only language ever spoken at his childhood home-- well enough to cover most of the inquiries. That it is a Saturday, and technically his day off, doesn’t even pop up on his mental evaluation screen.

That is, until Claude shuffles out of his bedroom in just pajama bottoms, and proceeds to make breakfast. It’s closer to lunchtime, but Lorenz can’t exactly muster the ability to protest, because. Claude isn’t wearing a shirt.

It’s been getting warm, Lorenz knows. It’s perfectly normal for a guy to walk around his house shirtless. It’s perfectly normal for Claude, who does yoga daily and has regularly played tennis before the lockdown, to be confident enough in his body to walk shirtless around his roommate. 

Whether it’s normal for Lorenz to sneak glances the entire time Claude putters around the kitchen is up for a debate. Eventually, he realises he’s been typing absolute nonsense for the last ten minutes, puts the email in drafts and goes for a pretend smoke on the balcony, then immediately kicks himself for it. Claude’s not an idiot. Lorenz has barely been leaving the house, doesn’t have pockets in his jogging gear, and never orders cigarettes on any of his online deliveries. There’s no ashtray, no smell, and it’s not like Lorenz is invisible behind the glass anyway. The frosting only goes up to the waist. 

The door slides open, and Lorenz nearly jumps over the railing and three floors down. When he turns around, Claude is still soft with sleep, but wearing a tank top and an apologetic expression.

“You can just tell me if I make you uncomfortable, you know,” he says. “Come on, I made toast.”

Lorenz doesn’t immediately follow him inside, for two reasons. Firstly, he’s dearly wishing for the ground to open and swallow him whole. Secondly… The tank top does nothing to hide Claude’s arms, and God, this is becoming A Problem. 

*

Lorenz is beginning to loathe the inside of his bedroom. It doesn’t help that he’s been spending increasing amounts of time in it. 

He’s thirty years old. He should be able to control himself. Instead, he’s rearranging his furniture for the twelfth time and coming up with more and more ridiculous excuses for why he’s not working from the living room anymore. Claude has been dressing in layers ever since the last incident, but it’s too late; Lorenz can’t put the image of his bare back out of his mind. It even invades his dreams. It’s distressing, not to mention kind of creepy. Lorenz is creeping on his roommate, in the middle of a global pandemic that’s forcing them to stay in the same 50 square meters 90% of the time. 

He’s a deplorable human being. The least he can do is minimise their suffering, and stay behind a closed door as much as possible. 

His phone buzzes. He’s been avoiding calls from Dorothea, and will surely pay for it in time, but when he glances at the screen, it’s even worse. It’s his father.

He picks up, because it’s easier than the alternative. “Good afternoon,” he says.

“There you are,” says his father, already displeased. “I’m told you’ve been putting some rubbish in my mouth.”

Lorenz winces. He must be referring to the whole social distancing fiasco. In the end, it fizzled out without too much fanfare, with the prime minister testing positive and all. Still, a union got involved, so Lorenz had to promise some things on the company’s behalf.

“I thought the PR team sent you a brief,” he says, hoping to derail. It never works. 

“That’s what I’m talking about! I don’t regret a single word, and I’m sick to death of this remote conferencing! I need you to unscrew it, and on the double.”

Lorenz suffers through the rest of the conversation on autopilot. There’s a lot of yessirs and nosirs, and then his father mercifully gets bored and leaves him be. By then, he feels so drained he can’t even muster the energy to be nervous about venturing outside. He needs tea.

“...Look, I’m not going to-- oh, there he is.” Claude is standing in the kitchen, phone in one hand and a pack of biscuits in the other. The kettle is already on. “I’ll call you-- yeah, I’ll tell him. Bye.”

Lorenz freezes in the doorway to his bedroom. He’s holding onto the doorknob like his life depends on it, but his body can’t decide whether to run back inside or just. Stay there forever. If he stands very still, maybe Claude will pretend not to notice him.

“Hi,” Claude stays where he is. He seems uneasy, and Lorenz can’t fault him; he’s behaving like a freak. “I’m making tea, if you want some.”

He really, really wants the tea. He always has tea after his father’s been a pain. But he can’t force himself to move, so he just stands there like an idiot, and nods. Claude brightens somewhat at that, immediately pulling out the mugs and busying himself around the kettle. He starts humming.

Lorenz doesn’t recognise the melody, but he does notice Claude hasn’t shaved since they last spoke. He has to shake his head to stop staring, and that seems to break whatever paralysis overcame him before. Now he just feels heavy, and the eight feet separating him from the kitchen counter seem like a great distance. He opts to stand by the sofa instead, arms crossed, unable to sit as his brain sings ‘in case, in case, in case’ to the tune of Claude’s song.

“So I was just on the phone with Petra,” Claude puts two mugs of tea at the coffee table. He looks Lorenz up and down, like he’s assessing a skittish animal, and doesn’t take a seat either. “She and Dorothea are worried about you.”

...Of course. Petra and Claude were in the same community outreach program back at university. Of course Claude knows _everybody_. Lorenz forces himself to inhale, then exhale; everything is fine. There’s tea, and all of this can be fixed. 

“I just…,” his voice sounds a thousand years old. He clears his throat. “I just needed some space. I’ll call them tonight.”

Claude doesn’t look terribly convinced. “I’m kinda worried, too. I’m sorry I make you uncomfortable, but you literally hide away in your room for days. This is your place, remember?,” he runs a hand through his hair, and Lorenz can’t help but follow the movement with his eyes, then feel like an utter psychopath and grab his tea just to be able to compel himself away. “I’ve talked to Hilda, they’re hardly going to fill my old room in this situation. I can be out of your hair, if that’s what you want.”

“But your work…”

“Lorenz, you can’t even look me in the eye. You don’t have to torture yourself, alright?”

Lorenz can feel his grip on the mug tighten. He carefully sets it down, before he spills tea all over himself. Hospitals are not a good place to be right now. With that particular crisis handled, his mind reluctantly moves over to the next.

Claude wants to move out. No, he thinks _Lorenz_ wants him to move out. Which is very, very far from the truth indeed. What Lorenz wants is to be able to pull himself together and stop looking at his friend like he’s a piece of meat. It’s taking longer than usual, because of the close proximity and the suffocating outside world, but Lorenz had done it before. Hell, he’d done it before _with Claude_. 

“You don’t make me uncomfortable,” he murmurs. It’s not exactly true, but the discomfort isn’t Claude’s fault, so Lorenz doesn’t consider it a lie either. “I’m just--- being weird. It’ll pass.”

“See, that’s what I’m worried about, too,” Claude takes a step forward, then pauses, looking for Lorenz’s reaction. When he doesn’t immediately run for his bedroom, he relaxes. “I’m a _counselor_ , Lorenz. I try not to bring the work home-- I mean, other than-- you know what I mean,” he pinches the bridge of his nose. “But you’re clearly going through something, and I want to help, but not if my presence is making it worse.”

“It’s not. I told you, it’ll pass,” Lorenz realises how defensive he must look, with his arms crossed like that, and makes an attempt to stand like a person instead of a coat rack. He instantly regrets it, because now his hands are dangling free at his sides and Claude is only a couple of feet away. Lorenz kind of wants to know what his hair feels like. “Besides, you can’t be moving right now, you can get fined for that.”

He doesn’t know if that’s correct, but it feels like something that could be a thing these days. Claude’s eyes are piercing, and once Lorenz makes the mistake of looking up, he can’t look away again. His throat is dry. 

“We’ve been friends for years,” Claude sighs. “Can you please just accept that I _care_ about you? You can tell me what it is I do that bothers you. I’m not going to judge you-- Lorenz?”

Lorenz isn’t entirely sure what happens next. Somewhere between ‘care’ and ‘judge’, his brain misfires and puts him on a completely different set of rails, and then he’s crying. Full-on ugly, snotty, hiccuping mess sort of crying. Distantly, he realises he doesn’t remember the last time he’d cried like this.

Claude, to his credit, doesn’t abandon him in disgust. He helps Lorenz sit down on the sofa, gets some tissues and pushes the mug of tea closer to him. When the sobs don’t weaken much after a minute, he grabs Lorenz’s hand and just… holds it. They’re sat next to each other on the sofa for what feels like hours, Lorenz is crying like a child, one hand full of damp tissues and the other trembling in Claude’s grip. Eventually, Claude puts some inconsequential nature show on the TV and Lorenz stares at the screen without really seeing it, slowly getting his breath under control. A dull throb of a headache begins to pulsate in his temples. 

“Looks like you needed it,” Claude says gently. “I was going to make fajitas for dinner. That ok?”

Lorenz nods. He feels rather numb, like he’s been hollowed out, but not in a bad way. Every time he hoped to stop crying, he’d think of something new that would set him off again, and now he is truly… empty. He doesn’t even have the capacity to be embarrassed at his outburst.

“I’m sorry,” he says anyway. Claude shushes him.

“Nonsense. Go wash up, I’ll start on food.”

It’s easy to follow the instructions. When confronted with his red, puffy face in the mirror, Lorenz has a brief moment of panic --he’s not at all presentable in this state-- before he remembers that it’s not like anybody will see him like this anyway. Anybody other than Claude, who’s making dinner, and therefore not going anywhere. His thoughts are thick and sluggish, and so he discards any that don’t involve splashing cold water and some moisturiser onto his tired face. Once he vaguely resembles a human being again, he ventures back out into the living room.

Claude, true to his worth, is already getting the pans out of the dishwasher. He’s humming; Lorenz wonders if he realises he’s doing it. He watches for a moment, before trailing off to the sofa. His limbs feel made of lead. As soon as he sits down, the TV panning over a vast expanse of a desert, his eyelids become somewhat leaden too. 

Claude puts his portion of the fajitas in the fridge for later, and covers him with a blanket. Lorenz sleeps until morning.

*

Contrary to all expectations, Lorenz wakes to what turns out to be a fairly good day.

Claude makes breakfast, and apologises profusely for leaving him to sleep on the sofa. Lorenz doesn’t mind. It’s probably the longest stretch of rest he’s had since the beginning of the lockdown, and his head feels oddly light. They eat too much French toast, have a nice cup of tea, and take turns showering before the work day begins.

Claude leaves the bathroom fully dressed. Lorenz has half a mind to tell him not to change his habits on his account, but leaves it be in the end. There’s a whole host of thoughts slowly coalescing inside his head, and rushing the process feels unwise.

He works from the sofa. It’s a slow day --each one slower, with everybody stuck in place-- and consists mostly of answering emails. There’s a rather apologetic message from the PR team admin, explaining that they didn’t mean to throw him under the bus, and Lorenz deletes it without answering. He doesn’t want to think about his father. The sun is out, he has a whole pot of tea, and Claude occasionally emerges from his room for a chat between the calls. 

He texts Dorothea. He receives a barrage of emojis in return.

He knows he should be feeling guilty and, well, _bad_ , about the previous day. He made Claude shoulder his silly break down, as if he didn’t have enough of that with his patients --he can hear them crying even through the door, sometimes-- and Lorenz has hardly stopped ogling him besides. But his friend is still here, despite all of that, and somehow, that puts his mind at ease. There is a tiny voice at the back of his head, frantically insistent that Claude feels responsible now, that he was ready to leave before Lorenz went into hysterics, but he does a pretty good job at squashing it down.

He’s known Claude for a while, after all. The last time someone tried to impose on him, the poor sod ended up begging for forgiveness in front of their entire graduation class. 

Still, he owes him some kind of an explanation.

“Claude,” he says, leaning against the kitchen counter. Claude’s attention is on pouring the leftover curry into tupperware, but he makes an affirmative noise. 

“Lorenz,” Claude doesn’t even look away from his task. “You don’t need to apologise about yesterday.”

Lorenz can feel his ears grow hot. “I just want to explain.”

There is a flash of a shadow on Claude’s face, there and gone in an instant. He snaps the lid on the tupperware shut in an unusually aggressive manner. Lorenz wonders if one can even pack tupperware aggressively, or if his mind has finally frayed.

“How long have we known each other?,” Claude asks, tone conversational, but shoulders tense.

“Ten… No, eleven years?,” Lorenz ventures. Saying it out loud takes a bit of the wind out of him; has it really been that long? He doesn’t like thinking about the early days of university much. He was, well, there is no kind way of putting it. Lorenz was a right arsehole all the way through his first year, until he’d finally fallen in with the right crowd. 

“And do you think that, during all of those years, I haven’t gotten to know you a little bit?”

Lorenz doesn’t quite know how to answer that, not without tying himself up in double negatives. He opens his mouth, shuts it again, _knows_ that the blush is crawling up his neck. Claude finally looks at him, and it’s a little bit like the look from the previous day --piercing, searching. Not… not angry. Some tightly coiled, frightened animal inside Lorenz’s chest relaxes a little bit. 

“Lorenz,” Claude says. “I _know_ you. I know this is hard on you. I know your dad is a prick. And, uh,” he rubs the back of his neck. “I’ve been a prick too, I guess. I’ve been trying to rile you up on purpose. I didn’t realise I might… trigger something, with everything going on. I’m sorry. Hear that? _I’m_ sorry. I’m the one who needs to apologise, not you.”

“...On purpose?”

Claude doesn’t blush easily. Lorenz can count on one hand the number of times he’d seen his friend embarrassed, or even at loss for words. And yet here they are, a pair of overripe tomatoes staring at each other in a tiny kitchen that saw more use over the last couple of weeks than its entire previous existence. 

“Yes. On purpose,” Claude says, but doesn’t elaborate. He looks like a spring ready to unwind. Lorenz sees two paths ahead -- one leading down to a potential screaming match, and another where he hides in his bedroom until he dies of starvation, or shame, whichever comes first. 

“You caught me looking,” he says. It was supposed to be a question, but there’s no point in pretending Lorenz can’t add two and two together. “And-- what? Thought you’d… prank me?”

He doesn’t have the vocabulary necessary to voice his suspicions, and Claude winces at his choice of words. He’s looking at the floor now, shoulders hunched, a bit like a scolded dog. It’s an odd manner on him, and Lorenz isn’t sure this is the reaction he wanted. He waits, and with each passing second his insides freeze a little bit more.

“No,” Claude mutters, after what feels like an eternity, then clears his throat. It seems like a mustering of forces, when he straightens up and looks Lorenz straight in the eye again. “No, I was trying to-- to push you. Just a bit.”

“Push me. You were… pushing me.”

“Yes.”

Lorenz pinches the bridge of his nose. He can feel a headache coming. “Well, you pushed me right off a bridge, didn’t you.”

“...Yeah,” Claude gives a long sigh. “In my defence, I’ve been trying to woo you for like, four years now. It’s only natural I’d pick the absolutely worst moment to be an ass about it.”

Lorenz’s brain short-circuits. 

It feels _a little_ like talking to his father; agreeing and laughing at the awkward jokes where appropriate. But instead of burying itself under a thick blanket of resignation, his consciousness actually attempts to puzzle some information together while his body operates on autopilot. It doesn’t do a great job of it, but it’s something, at least.

They have an entire, very quiet, cup of tea while Lorenz processes. If Claude notices something is off, he doesn’t mention it, and soon enough they bid each other good night before going into their separate bedrooms. Lorenz doesn’t even undress, just flops onto his bed and contemplates screaming into the pillow.

It’s nearly midnight by the time two of his most courageous brain cells find each other and rub together, slamming the final piece of the jigsaw down and doing a celebratory dance. 

_Trying to woo you--_

Claude is an idiot. Lorenz isn’t much better, but Claude-- Isn’t Claude supposed to be smarter than this? He doesn’t have an answer to this pressing question when he knocks on the other door in the apartment like a man possessed, but he’s fairly sure he’s about to find out.

Claude clearly _tried_ to get some sleep, before being brutally dragged out of bed at an ungodly hour. He’s rubbing his eyes, and blinking in confusion at his roommate. “Lorenz?”

“ _Woo me_?!,” Lorenz hisses. “And in four years, it hasn’t occurred to you to just bloody _tell_ me?!”

“I tried!,” Claude hisses back. “I asked you out last August! You ended up trying to set me up with Ingrid!”

"You joked about marrying her!"

"I joke when I'm nervous, al--!"

Lorenz can't stop himself. He's incensed, exhausted, scared shitless and mostly just very, very impatient. When he grabs Claude by the shoulders and pulls him in, a small, incredibly unimportant part of him screams something about decorum. He doesn't listen to it. 

Lorenz hasn't kissed anyone in years, but it hardly seems to matter. Claude makes a quiet noise in the back of his throat, somewhere between a gasp and a laugh, and everything falls into place.

"We have work in the morning," Claude reminds him when they part for air. "We should--," but then he kisses Lorenz again, presses him into the wall, and whatever they should be doing goes forgotten.

And the next morning, when he has his tea on the balcony with the sliding door open, Lorenz thinks that everything might just turn out alright in the end.


End file.
